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Coastal cities are grappling with how to shift their approach in designing the built environment to respond to global warming and sea level rise. With the potential increase of sea level rise by 1 metre by the year 2100, and climate change projecting more intense and frequent storms to British Columbia’s coasts, Vancouver will need to consider more resilient approaches to address flood risk along its shores. One area that will be exposed to flood risks includes the False Creek Flats, a historic tidal flat converted to rail and industrial hub in the core of the city, and on the cusp of transforming into the city’s next employment hub. At present, it is indiscernible that the False Creek Flats at one time was a historic tidal flat with a rich ecology supporting a variety of plants and wildlife, providing food and sustenance to the Indigenous people whose traditional territory included this land. The emergence of the rail and industry erased this history, the connection to the water, and the dynamic coastal processes that shaped the landscape. With the False Creek Flats undergoing a significant transformation over the next number of years, there is a window of opportunity to reconnect False Creek Flats to the coastal landscape, while also making room for flood waters and shifting perspectives on how we live with and build with water. This practicum seeks to develop a resilient design approach for False Creek Flats through three lenses: robustness, ensuring people are safe; adaptive, making room for the water; and transformative, shifting perspectives through design interventions. Leveraging the opportunity to make False Creek Flats resilient to climate change and flooding will benefit Vancouver by creating opportunities to shift public perspectives on how the city should adapt to sea level rise and climate change, while also bolstering public policy that will make the city and its residents more adaptive and resilient to change.

The exam from SOCY344 (Dept of Sociology) taught by Cynthia B Levine-Rasky in December 2017

Segregated funds are individual insurance contracts that offer growth potential of investment in underlying assets while providing a guarantee to protect part of the money invested. The guarantee can cause significant losses to the insurer which makes it essential for the insurer to hedge this risk. In this project, we discuss the hedging effectiveness of delta hedging by studying the distribution of hedging errors under different assumptions about the return on underlying assets. We consider a Geometric Brownian motion and a Regime Switching Lognormal to model equity returns and compare the hedging effectiveness when risk-free rates are constant or stochastic. Two one-factor short-rate models, the Vasicek and CIR models, are used to model the risk-free rate. We find that delta hedging is in general effective but large hedging errors can occur when the assumptions of the Black-Scholes' framework are violated.

The works of an artist, once the toast of Broadway, will be brought back to life at a noon hour lecture September 20 at the Shu Box Theatre. Peter Weiss was an acclaimed German playwright, novelist, and filmmaker, and is best known for his play MARAT / SADE, which won the Tony Award for best play in 1966. The play was later made into a film. But there is so much more to Weiss’ works. Staff no

Rapid suppression, or initial attack (IA), is the primary method of managing new fires, with relatively low costs and high containment rates. Factors contributing to containment are well understood, but consequences for the landscape-level distribution of fire risk are not. This research introduces a method of assessing IA impacts using spatially-explicit burn probability (BP) analysis, and applies it to a study area in Kootenay National Park. BP is assessed with and without the influence of suppression by combining the Burn-P3 model with a stochastic probability of containment algorithm. Results indicate IA impacts are spatially heterogeneous. Suppression was most effective in recently burned areas, whereas mature, contiguous fuels moderated its influence. IA was least effective in the management zone where natural fire is not permitted, suggesting supplementary tactics may be appropriate. Managers can use this method to compare emergent, fine-scale consequences of fire management policy and increase long-term management effectiveness.

The Lake Sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens) continues to grow throughout life, though the process by which muscle stem cells, called satellite cells (SCs) contribute to formation of fibers in the myotome is largely unknown in this endangered fish. Since muscle function and growth are critical to survival, it is important to understand the functional basis of fiber growth, and how SCs provide daughter cells that fuse into fibers in myotome development and regeneration. The hypotheses are that during aging: the cell cycle of SCs lengthens, the ratio of SCs to myonuclei decreases, and myonuclear domain increases. This experiment used the single fiber model and a pulse-chase design in which exposure to bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) labeled S-phase for the first 2 hr in culture. Myofibers were isolated from 20-40 fish per age (1-6 months post-hatch). After fiber culture for 24 hours, fibers were fixed and stained for BrdU or Pax7 (expressed by myogenic stem cells) with colour detection. The number of Pax7- or BrdU-positive nuclei and the total number nuclei associated were counted per fiber in 8-20 fibers per dish. Results showed a significant change in the ratio of Pax7+ SCs to myonuclei as the fish age (p < 0.05) with an apparent decrease in cell cycle duration with increasing age (p < 0.05). This investigation adds to our understanding of SC contributions to myofiber growth in the developing Lake Sturgeon and results will be a new foundation for future research on the role of environmental influences on muscle in Lake Sturgeon.

Mining operations require vast quantities of water to run ore processing facilities and thus have a responsibility to manage this critical resource. Operations are often located in areas of limited water supply, which may create a competitive climate for water consumption. Make-up water for mineral processing can represent a significant portion of production cost for mining companies. While necessary for mining, water in open pits is problematic for extraction activities and leads to increased operational and maintenance costs. This paper analyses the operational and financial impacts of water at three copper mines. Potential options to improve reclaim and pit dewatering volumes are evaluated with the objective to reduce operational costs and water losses. The evaluation of these options integrates Teck’s sustainability strategy and considers water regulations currently changing in Canada and Chile. This paper concludes with the advantages of maximizing open pit dewatering to reduce make-up water requirements, and thus reduce mining production costs.